Handling, Distributing, and Sale of Fruit 209 



capacity the commission merchant is a competitor of the 

 growers for whose interests he is acting as an agent. It 

 is a common practice for the commission merchant who 

 receives apples on consignment to transfer them to his 

 own account at a low price. He then becomes a jobber 

 and a speculator. He holds the fruit for a few days or 

 weeks in storage and sells it at an advanced figure. This 

 practice is justified by many commission merchants on 

 the score that the fruit is purchased at the prevailing mar- 

 ket value. The practice, however, is open to the most 

 flagrant abuses, and a shipper's interest is the first to suffer 

 when it comes into competition with the investment of 

 the commission merchant in the capacity of a jobber. 

 This dual capacity of the commission merchant and other 

 agencies of distribution, next to the making of dishonest 

 returns, is the cause of more distrust on the part of the 

 producer than any one abuse in the fruit trade. The 

 feeling is growing that as a matter of public policy no 

 individual or firm which acts as an agent for the producer 

 ought to have the legal right to speculate in the same 

 produce. These agencies are charged with protecting the 

 interests of their clients, but no agent can discharge his 

 duties faithfully where his own product comes in direct 

 competition with the product of his client. 



A flagrantly dishonest practice that is sometimes fol- 

 lowed by commission firms is the repacking of the product 

 into more packages than the original consignment con- 

 tained. Potatoes are sometimes taken from the sacks, 

 a seam sewed across the bottom in such manner that six 

 of the original sacks fill seven. Oranges are sometimes 

 repacked so that ten boxes received from the shipper fill 



